The Paws That Refresh Us

To add a bit of variety (and a dose of fun) to a blog that deals with some pretty serious issues, today’s entry is about cats. My cats, in particular, who are quite possibly the cutest, craziest, and most talented felines in the universe….but then, I’m not biased or anything.

Like me, all three are quirky and overweight, and they have a death wish that manifests itself in some very strange ways. The boy kitty, Mickey, loves to throw himself in front of me as I’m zipping around the house in forward motion, forcing my feet to come to a screeching halt while all the other body parts continue in the original direction at the original velocity. And the girls, Rosie and Casi, have a habit of launching themselves off the headboard of my bed in the wee hours of the morning, and landing squarely on top of my full bladder. (Come to think of it, maybe it’s karmic retribution for all the times I’ve kept people up half the night with my own disruptive behaviors.)

They also seem to lack an appreciation of the fact that I have been performing my own toileting and grooming routines for 50+ years without benefit of feline assistance. They HATE it when I insist on going into the bathroom alone and will try almost anything in order to be admitted to the sanctuary, including scratching and/or yowling ceaselessly at the door for the express purpose of annoying me so I’ll let them in, just to make that infernal noise stop.

Then there’s the thing with their food idiosyncrasies. Each one of these critters prefers a different diet. I mean, they don’t agree on ANYTHING: one will only eat canned cat food, another only dry cat food, and the other wants to chew on me—fingers, toes, chin, whatever he can get hold of at a given moment. I know he eats other food when I’m not around—this fat-cat weighs at least fifteen pounds!—but when I am, he grabs the closest part of my anatomy in his teeth and begins to chow down, ignoring my yelps and cries of “YOWCH!! Dammit!!”

But for all the ways they can be a pain in the patoot, they make up for it in unconditional affection. There’s nothing quite like the cozy feeling of a soft, warm kitty curled up between my husband and me in bed, purring contentedly…..or being greeted by three enthusiastic fur-kids at the end of a hard day. And they don’t care whether I’m manic or depressed, or mind the fact that taking proper care of their humans sometimes involves licking the tears off my face or ‘helping’ me rearrange my sock drawer in the middle of the night.

These are the paws that refresh us. Who are yours?